Dr. Yong Ping Jiang is an associate professor and chair of the department of Oriental medicine at the Minnesota College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (MCAOM) at Northwestern Health Sciences University. He has been an instructor and member of the clinical faculty there since 1996. He received his DOM degree from Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1983 and a PhD in herbal classics from the same college in 1995. He is a licensed acupuncturist and is board certified in acupuncture and Oriental medicine by the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.
Dr. Jiang is a member of the Shandong Society for Pulmonary Diseases and the Shandong Yantai Society for Traditional Chinese Medicine, both in China. He is fluent in Chinese and English, and has published several articles in English and two books in Chinese.
Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) affects more than 15% of the U.S. population but evades most practitioners’ radar. Just five years ago, it wasn’t even on my radar, despite already having 20 years of experience as a clinician at that time. The more I dug (similar to leaky gut and post-COVID syndrome), the more I found my patients were suffering from this disorder.
Research supports the effectiveness of selecting the distal acupuncture points for the treatment of microtrauma and for relieving pain, particularly in cases of chronic shoulder pain. But to make the treatment results long-lasting, clinical experience and research suggest that instead of treating the most painful structure first, we identify the inhibited driver, restore reliable recruitment, confirm it with immediate re-testing, and only then address the painful area as a branch of a deeper pattern.
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The motivation behind our practice of medicine is important, impacting not just our experience but also the experiences of those we treat. It is perhaps for this reason that the aspiration to help not just some, but all beings heal, has historically been an important part of the medical tradition. To explain this, we need to consider how medicine is interwoven with other social domains.